Invented in this patent are low-noise monolithic microchip lasers capable of producing wavelengths ranging from IR through visible to UV for a variety of applications such as eye-safe laser transmitters and LIDAR, mid-IR remote sensing, laser projection display systems, material processing, micro-machining, photolithography, defect inspection, optical information processing and communication, spectroscopic detection of trace gases, diagnostics, therapy, photo-refractive surgeries, fluorometric analysis of organic cells, nanotechnology, and scientific research.
Current sources of coherent UV light are not entirely satisfactory, each has some unfortunate drawbacks. Excimer lasers can produce output beams with high average powers, but require toxic, corrosive halogen gases for operation, which necessitates gas processing, storage and circulation technologies. There lasers are bulky, complex, potentially hazardous, and expensive. Furthermore, they cannot operate at high pulse repetition rates, and their beam transverse mode is quite far from TEM00. Ion lasers including frequency-doubled ion lasers are available at a number of wavelengths in the visible and UV region. However, they are inefficient, have high operating costs and short lifetimes. Dye lasers are impractical for large-scale industrial production since they require frequent changes of the liquid dye solution to maintain operation. Fiber lasers incorporate the active lasing dopant ions into a thin, flexible, glass matrix, and direct the output light via low-loss fiber propagation. Such systems require minimal alignment, and the output beam quality is predominantly determined by physical fiber structure. However, intracavity frequency conversion is not generally possible with fiber lasers. In addition, fiber laser systems suffer from low power level, short lifetime, low efficiency, and are very expensive.
There has been a great deal of interest in developing solid-state lasers that produce coherent UV radiation. For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,388,114, Zarrabi, et al. disclosed a self-Q-switched monolithic laser to produce green or UV light through intracavity Second Harmonic Generation (SHG) or Fourth Harmonic Generation (FHG). In U.S. Pat. No. 5,835,513, Pieterse, et al. described a Q-switched laser with external cavity Third Harmonic Generation (THG) for producing UV. U.S. Pat. No. 5,943,351 issued to Zhou, et al. demonstrated a laser, wherein SHG was in a main resonator and THG was in a sub-resonator. U.S. Pat. No. 6,005,878 to Kung, et al. was for multimode UV. In U.S. Pat. No. 6,031,854, Ming used a two-step pump scheme to achieve laser output at Deep Ultraviolet (DUV). Disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,088,379 to Owa, et al. was an apparatus for generating laser light at 193 nm to 213 nm based on Sum Frequency Mixing (SFM) of a light having wavelength in the range from 650 nm to 1100 nm, emitted from a Ti:sapphire laser, and another light having wavelengths near 260 nm, resulted from SHG of a rare-earth ion laser. A similar system was described by Caprara, et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 6,198,756. Wavelength conversion in U.S. Pat. No. 6,347,102 to Konno, et al. was achieved through an SHG crystal and an SFM crystal placed in the resonator of fundamental wavelength. Single Longitudinal Mode (SLM) CW operation at green, blue, and UV was obtained by Zhang, as described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,373,868, by means of intracavity harmonic generations through two or three nonlinear optical crystals in series and wavelength selection elements. CW laser output at about 360 nm from an apparatus comprising a Pr-doped or co-doped gain medium and an SHG crystal was demonstrated by Okazaki, et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 6,490,309. Dudelzak, et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 6,498,801 described multi-stage production of DUV by the use of phase conjugated Stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS) and harmonic generation. In U.S. Pat. No. 6,526,073, Spinelli, et al. demonstrated a system for producing CW DUV laser through SFM, wherein the optically nonlinear crystal was positioned in a traveling wave resonator for circulation of the first wavelength radiation while the second wavelength radiation was from an intracavity frequency-doulbed argon ion laser. A system for producing green or UV output, comprising an ND:glass laser, a frequency conversion device, and a zig-zag slab amplifier, was described by Hackel, et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 6,700,906. A laser device for producing wavelength below 200 nm based on SFM of 946 nm radiation from an Nd:YAG laser and its fourth harmonic beam was disclosed by Gerstenberger, et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 6,741,620.
These solid-state laser systems are generally complicated, expensive, and low efficiency. One way to improve the frequency conversion efficiency is to focus the incident beams to small spot sizes. This approach, however, is limited by the diffraction constraints and thermal lensing issues. Another approach is resonant cavity enhancement. An annoyance in intracavity frequency conversion is the “green problem” discovered by T. Baer in 1986. Three approaches to the “green problem” have been investigated in the prior art: (1) lasers operated with a great many longitudinally modes (up to 100) to average out intensity fluctuations in time domain; (2) SLM lasers to eliminate longitudinal mode coupling; (3) lasers operated at few modes with decoupled eigenstates of polarization. All these approaches require the insertion of mode-selection elements and/or temperature stabilization or a long resonator, introducing additional complexity and cost.
It would be an advantage and, in fact, an object of the present invention as well, to provide a method and apparatus whereby wavelengths covering a broad range from IR through visible to UV can be obtained with high efficiency, low optical noise, and compact size.